Girl In The Spiders Web

 The Girl In the Spider’s Web: My Thoughts 


Book # 4 in the Millennium Series originally written by Swedish writer Steig Larssson and continued by author David Lagercrantz.  The main heroine of the book is Lisbeth Salander who is a strong fighter against men who abuse women and get away with it. The story centers around Frans Balder a swedish computer programmer who decides one day to take custody of his young autistic son August from his mother Hanna a former actress who is unable to cope with the care for the boy and is living with a washed up actor Lasse Westman who was spending the money Frans was sending them on drugs and alcohol. 


Balder receives a phone call from law enforcement that he is in danger and is told that he needs to be transferred to a safe location, but he disregards the warnings as he puts his faith into the sophisticated alarm system installed in his house. As he spends more time with August he notices that the boy exhibits savant syndrome, he produces drawings of impressive detail and almost lifelike down to the smallest detail and at the same time a gift with numbers. 


This book focuses on espionage, hacking servers and the prevention of the exposure of highly guarded secrets of people in high places, namely the NSA.(National Security Agency) Heroine, Lisbeth Salander shows off her unique and incredible hacking skills when she successfully hacks into the NSA servers. Much of the book also talks of artificial intelligence becoming as smart as humans which is the work Frans Balder was working on before he was killed by a criminal Jan Holtser working for the Spider Society spearheaded by Camilla, Lisbeth Salander's twin sister who also was out to get revenge on Lisbeth as she was unsuccessful at manipulating Lisbeth to her side, and at the same time never forgave her sister for the harm inflicted on their father whom Camilla was proud of as he exhibited power, something she relished in as a sense of strength, and their mother was weak and cowardly. 


The best part of the book was August witnessed his fathers murder and was subsequently rescued by Salander which showed a softer side of the character as she tries to communicate with the boy to solve the murder and unlock the secrets of the NSA which she is successful at doing. At some points she sees a little bit of herself in him as she was also neglected and an introvert who had to resort to the cyber world for friends to escape her hellish abusive life.  


Mikael Blomkvist the Swedish journalist of millennium magazine which by now is in danger of losing creative control to outside investors, however in the end they prevail when they break the story about the NSA’s corruption thus buying out their investors. 


In some parts of the book, Lisbeth’s past comes to light as Blomkvist who by chance happened to run into Camilla who attempts to seduce Blomkvist but fails. Afterwards, he visits Holger Palmgren a former guardian of Lisbeth and her abusive past comes to light, her father a Russian criminal Alexander Zalachenko who was fiercely protected and feared who severely abused her mother Agneta as well as Lisbeth herself. Lisbeth exacted her revenge by planting a petrol bomb in his car resulting in him being severely burned.


The only section of the book  that is rather confusing and complicated in terms of understanding as an ordinary reader to follow with all the tech hacker talk, singularity theory, black-holes, prime number factorization, it seems like you have to be a mathematician to fully understand this part


In conclusion, it is a good read, but I think the first three were easier to understand for the ordinary reader. Definitely it helps to be familiar with the main characters’ Lisbeth and Mikael Blomkvist backstory.


 

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